Guild Wars 2

LCV.7245:

Well, when I watch some of my idols, like Osicat or Pyro, use iLeap, they seem to always land it. This may be because they’re recording their content then choosing the clips where it works. But because I’ve never seen them miss the swap, I have to wonder if they throw out a ton of their clips, or if they have a better understand of the ability and they never miss it.

Just because someone is uploading videos doesn’t mean they are actually good at the game. They are not going to upload fights where they get facerolled by cheese builds, counter builds or more skilled people. Especially in a game like GW2 where the only thing we have to go by is a ghetto leaderboard and forum arguments, no recount, logs or arena ratings.

I really like how much it rains sometimes in the green keep on EB. More of that please.

I’ve found that praying helps.

None really. You’d be half as effective as a rabid or zerker mesmer of any build.

Or you know make the clone actually leap instead of slide. Too much to ask though I know.

Blink, decoy and staff2.

Eucalyptus.9784:

Hey guys,

So I’m trying to decide between using my PU Power build or my PU Condi build. I know both are relatively viable/meta at the moment, or at least, slight variations of them, so I’m wondering what people like/dislike about being Power vs. Condi. I mostly play just WvW, and some PvE to farm/when I’m bored.

PU Power Builld

PU Condi Build

I was in a crazy 3x Lord SM Battle last night that was just huge mayhem between all 3 servers, and the guild lord resurrected 3 times. I was using my PU Condi and didn’t die once. I was invincible. I’m wondering if that same sort of survivability is possible with my PU Power variation, because you lose a lot of potential at gaining Chaos Armor.

Let me know why you like Power vs. Condi, and also any comments on the builds. Thanks!

Also I really like your condition PU build. I would definitely swap out feedback for null field though, since you have the grand total of 0 condition removal without it which can and will kill you, and since you have a tiny cooldown on staff2 it’s another field you can get an easy chaos armor from.

I’d also put a torment sigil instead of strength on your staff. Traveler runes have really good synergy with this specific build (lots of buffs from very high chaos armor uptime in addition to conditions) and are pretty necessary for solo roaming.

Lastly I’d swap a few dire pieces for more rabid, but that is preference, and food you can use super veggie pizza/quality crystal that are extremely effective and cheap (1-2 silver each, I make 100×2 of them every few weeks for about 2 gold or so).

Other than that the build is perfect for solo roaming (OP as kitten actually but shh).

Tier 2 cultural light on male sylvari shows all of your back and other body parts that glow. Match your skin, glow and hair to the colors you will dye the armor. You can thank me later.

For roaming I definitely prefer condition PU. Power PU is much squishier and vulnerable to outnumbered situations and ambushes. At least on my T1 EU server I often run into very skilled small roaming groups that make an easy meal out of my power builds while my PU staff condition build has a lot more breathing room. Don’t underestimate 20k health and 3k armor. Clones also inherit armor which adds up.

Both have similar killing power with condition PU having more sustained pressure while power has a lot more control and chasing power. Condition is more passive and noobs will drop like flies without any effort at all. I can’t count the times where my staff clones unintentionally down a random thief while I am fighting their ally. Also high chaos armor uptime from staff2 leaping your fields and the staff4 skill is amazing survivability. The only weakness I have is condition builds, but power has the same problem.

Lastly if you want to flip camps condition PU has a much easier time. If the camp isn’t fully upgraded you can just charge in and start spamming without any risk of dying. Pulling them in a corner into a chaos storm while bombing clone deaths and chaining chaos armor is super efficient and safe. Fully upgraded you have to make a couple of pulls but still no problem.

Mogar.9216:

I’m a huge fan of dodge but not a very frequent weapon swaper in combat.

Then no it is not worth it. If you spend most of your time in combat with GS or staff for example you don’t want on swap sigils on that weapon, just put them on your secondary weapon set.

Also the cripple on clone death is just not reliable in wvw where most skilled people have a lot of room to specifically avoid standing on top of your clones when they die. Blink on the other hand is as reliable as it gets and can easily turn tides.

Mesmer is still great for roaming in WvW, imo the best profession beating out thieves simply because most roaming thief builds don’t really stand a chance against an equally skilled mesmer. Not much changed at all about that with the patch.

If it is blob zerging you care for mesmers are still complete kitten at tagging, doing aoe/cleave damage and surviving, the patch didn’t change much at all there either.

PvP mesmers were and are middle of the pack, again patch changed little to nothing there.

Exactly, zerker is a much safer choice while the difference between zerker and assassin is not huge. You could use 1/4 pvt gear and no one would notice anyway. Just look at all the people that crafted celestial sets because of how efficient crit damage was on celestial gear, not fun.

It really depends on what kind of commanding you plan on doing. If you are on a T1 server wanting to command the EB pug train during peak hours than absolutely don’t do it on your mesmer, or elementalist for that matter. You will have to compromise the blobs positioning for your own survival, and cost your server points in the process. You will probably create a very toxic atmosphere that benefits no one but the other 2 servers.

If you want to command EotM blobs or smaller BL blobs at weird hours maybe than sure mesmer can scrape the bottom of the barrel and get done what a guardian or a warrior can do in small scale clashes of pug blobs.

Also there is pretty much nothing you will bring to the table as a mesmer commander that you couldn’t bring to the table not commanding on your mesmer. Also you can’t blast water fields, you can’t hold a candle to shout spam just to name a couple.

No, and considering the enormous cost of a LIGHT ascended armor set I would definitely go with zerker over assassins if you have a life and only plan on making one this year.

I find 4 points in domination for most PU builds very overrated. Also out of the two I’d definitely prefer the 1200 blink for WvW.

Abyssal scepter [&AgFSeQAA] is the best fit for mesmer thematically imo. My problem with the abyssal scepter is that I can’t really find a torch that matches it nicely, like there are 2 focus weapons that match is perfectly.

So for scepter and torch I like to use celestial ascended skins [&AgGotwAA] [&AgGutwAA], they obviously match each other perfectly and are also a good mesmer color. I like the color of the torch flame a lot too.

Dying in your shadow refuge, the coolest way to not die.

Unless you enjoy the fashionable trench coat look, human/norn/sylvari female with assassin skin transmute or sylvari in cultural skins.

Any variation of PU is amazing for solo roaming.

Making condition damage personal would already be a big step in the right direction. As long kitten people have to compete for one burning debuff nothing else really matters, the design is just stupid.

I have both a human and a sylvari mesmer. One rabid roamer the other zerker meta build. I really like the sylvari because you can get very creative with the colors, and dyes look really good on sylvari cultural armor. Celestial is actually white instead of grey for example. I like human too because they just fit the game’s theme the best, and armor looks great on them.

Asura are definitely the best pvp race though, especially for mesmers. Not only are they the most “difficult” to target, it’s very hard to tell what they are doing or even which way they are facing in hectic situations with a lot of particles flying around.

Thief and mesmer because I play and understand both more than other professions and they are almost always squishy. I’ll target an ele first if they are glassy too.

Traveler runes still have great synergy with condition PU builds and if you solo roam a lot and utilize the movement speed bonus they are a solid choice. Your build looks great for roaming now, you should have an easy time killing noobs with that. I’d swap out signet of domination for null field, mantra of resolve or disenchanter and phantasmal fury for far reaching manipulations, but it’s all preference.

The problem is all that dire gear. You need more rabid pieces if you want to do half decent bleed damage on a mesmer. You won’t have enough damage to kill a skilled player 1v1 with that gear and build, I know I wouldn’t die to that.

Traits are a bit messy, empowered illusions does not work with conditions that your clones apply, only with their direct damage. Weird that you would spend 10 points for a trait that does nothing for your build. Vulnerability also doesn’t do anything for conditions, so all the points in domination go to waste other than the 10% condition duration..

Also using random zerker pieces in a condition build is not a great idea. Runes are fine for any condition mesmer build, but there are better ones and more specialized ones.

In my opinion the auto attack needs to be changed. It is too slow and unreliable to justify the long cast time and very slow projectile speed. Staff auto attacks should be more like the trident auto attacks, which ironically is probably the coolest mesmer weapon.

Warlock needs to be changed. It does nothing for condition mesmers, never worth casting it unless you plan on shattering it immediately. A staff clone will do much more damage than this phantasm. In power builds it can hit very hard, but the projectile is a complete joke that most people will evade without even knowing it or trying. If Anet wants power builds to still have some synergy with the staff they should make the auto attack scale better with power, and can the warlock in its current state.

I’m more frustrated with white myself. Celestial is the whitest white available, yet it only is truly white on nightmare dungeon pieces when it comes to light armor. On most other light armor pieces it ends up looking grey in most areas, or blue/orange depending on the light.

Horrible idea.

I really like the tiny cooldown on GS2 when traited. It’s also the only weapon that is HALF decent at tagging. In full zerker gear one auto attack is usually enough to tag anything and anybody. The cleave and aoe is unreliable if not laughable, but no one tags single targets better. iZerker is great for roaming too, really great.

I think we should stop bumping this thread :p

For WvW any variation of PU (rabid or zerker gear are probably the most effective here) is the clear winner if you plan on roaming at all. If you just want to join a zerg and tag things, you should reroll to elementalist since mesmers scrape the bottom of the tagging barrel.

Little is more survivable than rabid (maybe a bit of dire in there too) PU mesmer, 3k armor and 20k+ health and 2k condition damage with food/stacks. Staff+traveler runes basically mean you will only fight when you want to, even thieves and warriors will have trouble engaging you against your will.

For PvE there is no variation at all, just get full zerker gear and change your traits depending on what your group needs most, usually reflects.

A yak could probably “juke” a warlock’s projectile too xD

How to counter mesmers: aggressively stroll away from them.

I sneak in plenty of knight gear and no one notices. Condition damage being completely unviable is a problem though, at the very least make it personal.

Is there any place for me to look at popular necro builds? I figured out by reading various threads that the infamous MM build is 20/0/30/20/0 but that is as far as I got and I’d like to try out other builds too. I’m initially only interested in “meta” builds not hip experimental builds. Help?

I’d prefer a speed trait like the ele dagger one honestly. I can’t live without blink and decoy, using my 3rd utility for a speed boost instead of a condition cleanse would have me in conflict. I’m happy with traveler runes for now since both condition duration and boon duration really compliment PU roaming, but I’d like to finally for the first time since Beta use runes on my mesmer with a goal other than speed.

Most PU mesmers have very little, sometimes even none, condition removal. Meanwhile the whole game is circling around a condition “meta” when it comes to pvp in both spvp and wvw roaming.

Instead of crying for nerfs, maybe try and put some conditions on that pesky mesmer, you would be surprised.

On another note today I initiated on a SFR necro and after a while another necro from the same guild shows up to 2vs1 me. I disengage and they chase me for a small distance. I kinda linger and one of them comes to me while the other one stays behind watching. I fight one of them, all the way to the stomp, and the other necro doesn’t interfere at all. Then the other necro engages me and we fight. I bowed twice after that was over, respect.

It’s tricky going from power to condition, you have to trust your clones and give up some control. In the end though well played condition PU builds do not have less dps than power PU builds, if anything 3 staff clone spam probably outdpses 2 pistol phantasms. Also condition builds have a lot more armor that clones also inherit.

Tom Gore.4035:

As I said, you can bring your code of honor. Just don’t expect it from the opposition. Sometimes you meet another “honorable” person and fight 1v1 to the death, but you don’t get to complain if the other player “abuses” all possible mechanics in the game just to kill you, including running and resetting the fight, getting friends, etc.

It’s a voluntary handicap for you – not some set rule that you can enforce on others.

But from a personal point of view, I usually do engage 1v1 if I see a roamer ankitten ot going somewhere in a hurry. If the fight looks like there is no chance in hell I can win, I’ll run. Some builds just counter others to the point the other player has to make a huge mistake to lose and in many cases it’s impossible to see what build the player is running before engaging.

There is also player skill, of course. When on my warrior I will usually get destroyed by good thieves and mesmers. Should I then not engage thieves and mesmers at all?

As I said before, if you want to duel “honorably”, go to the arena in OS. If you want to roam and kill ppl 1v1, bring a build that can catch runners. Simple as that.

You seem hellbent on arguing semantics because I used the word “duel” and “honor”. Commons sense and decency in 1vs1 situations is all I am trying to discuss here, can you work with that without stumbling over the language?

Ision.3207:

I just adore these cartoon video game “gladiators” that always fight to the end, never flee and die “honorably”. ROFL

Trust me, it’s a load of crap.

Basically what you have are some classes that cannot as easily disengage and escape from a fight than other classes. This does not make these classes bad, as they may have many other very strong abilities that greatly outshine other classes in different game modes. However, if the player of these classes likes to solo roam in WvW, but is also one of these thin-skinned tantrum throwing types that demand that the world adjusts to their gameplay style, and everyone else be dammed – then you get these whiney QQ posts in the forums. And believe me, 9 out 10 of all these please nerf Thieves and Warriors thread starters could give a rats-behind about “balance”, the real issue is their wounded adolescent E-pride.

The bottom line is that WvW is an open PvP field that already has its rules of what you can, and cannot do. And sorry, but neither you nor I get to “invent” rules by which others must “behave/play” in WvW, no matter how many frustrated tantrums you throw when things don’t go your way. But you can at least take solace in one thing, you are not alone – because if you go visit the WvW forums of nearly every single MMO, you will notice the exact same whine/QQ tantrums being thrown as the ones on our forums. And the tantrums are being thrown by the exact same type of player: the terri-bad solo roamer that adores 1v1s, but unfortunately, they really suck at it, so they scream and whine for nerfs and game mechanics changes in hopes that mommy and daddy Anet will punishes their “bullies”.

The QQ and projection is real in this one lol

Many people do have some honor though. It’s not like the honorable roamers are rare or even in the minority.

Yesterday for example I was fighting a thief when someone from my server jumped in, I disengaged and went a little bit further back and the thief followed me and we continued fighting till one of us died.

Reading this thread you would think that nearly everybody is a scumbag because reasons, but really the point was to ask people what they think about those few kitteny noobs that happily engage but quickly flee or call for help when they inevitably start getting owned. Why not die and learn something? Why engage at all? It just seemed embarrassing to me and I wanted to see people’s logic behind it, and I sure did

Well he was downed with his downed clone next to him and poof both gone. No bags or experience.

No he somehow left the game in downed state before I could stomp him. There is a chance he had enough time to drop combat.

I just had a mesmer chase me across the map with 2 of his allies, go into downed state when it was just him left and log out before I could stomp him! yes log out. Either SFR or BB mesmer in the BB BL ruins this morning, I’ll remember him for sure.

Celestial is not great. Sure you can kill noobs and be more or less effective with power builds that utilize bleeds and high regeneration uptime, but keep in mind that in WvW you will meet people fully stacked with specialized food buffs that will greatly overpower you assuming similar skill simply because they are build to kill and you are not.

Celestial gear for condition builds is completely horrible though, so forget that.

As a thief you are probably particularly familiar with this topic. Dead people can get very chatty.

Are you a heartseeker, death blossom or pistolwhip spamming noob that needs to learn how to play a thief properly, or should you just go back to roaming WvW? Are you playing a broken build, or is the whole profession broken? Stealth is definitely unfair that is for sure. Not to mention using scorpion wire in skyhammer.

Any memorable quotes?

So fleeing from 1vs1 situations that you start losing or calling your friends to Xvs1 them is ok as long as no one /bowed. Fair enough.

Not engaging is fine of course, I’m talking about situations where both parties happily engage each other 1vs1 but then resort to fleeing or calling for help once they start losing.

What is your opinion on people that flee a fair duel once they realize they will lose? thieves and mesmers vanishing and warriors flying away are probably the main culprits here.

I solo roam a lot and I see a lot of people not just fleeing the duel once they start losing, but trying to aggro guards or even bring their friends into a 1vs1 duel.

All is fair in love and pvp, or is it cowardly?

Salvage everything. Use basic salvage kit on blue/green items and use master’s salvage kits on rares. Do check exotic drops on the TP because sometimes people want to buy those for the skins. Also check the exotics with superior runes/sigils in them, more often than not it’s worth using a black lion salvage kit to sell the ectos and sigil/rune separately.

The only reason people buy greens/blues on the TP is to salvage that gear themselves , so the prices will never be good enough to justify you selling them. Not to mention that you get luck from salvaging everything yourself.